The safety of food is essential for effective prevention of food poisoning and other food-inducing infections. Histamine poisoning is one example of the food poisoning. As is well known, histamine is produced from free histidine by means of bacteria having histidine decarboxylase (mainly Morganella). Lean fish, such as tuna and mackerel, especially have the high histidine content as the precursor of histamine. Fish meat polluted with such bacteria may have large accumulation of histamine. Uptake of the polluted fish meat causes transient food poisoning. This food poisoning is called allergy-like food poisoning (histamine poisoning). The reported number of histamine poisoning cases is relatively small. A large number of unreported cases are, however, expected, because of the transient tendency of the histamine poisoning. The actual cases may thus amount to a considerable number.
Histamine is water-soluble and relatively stable to heat and is thus not decomposable for removal in the ordinal cooking process. Monitoring the histamine content is accordingly the most effective measure for prevention of the histamine poisoning. Histamine may be a control target in the HACCP sanitation management system.
Currently available methods take advantage of enzyme reactions to measure histamine contained in food (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open Gazette No. 2001-157597 and No. 2003-61650).